My idea is to have an online website for people to order handknit items that they can choose themselves from their favourite knitting magazine or book, and have it done by women in remote villages in a developing country.

The women would have to come from a culture that knits as part of its tradition, such as Peru, or some other such country.

The yarn would be purchased in the buyer's country of origin, and sent to a representative who would then help the women get the pattern translated, etc.

I had this idea because knitting is very trendy, and hand knit garments are very, very expensive. Someone in France charges 200 Euros for a scarf!!! but they are knit in France so that explains that.

What I need is your help in helping me get some information so I can write up a proposal to get this crowd funded.

Sorry for this very personal diary but I have a friend who is German but living in Strasbourg. She is not entitled to benefits in Germany because she worked in France for the last few years.

She suffers from Asperger's syndrome and she has problems thriving in society. She has no job at the moment but has a little money for an apartment to share if it is not too expensive. She is on unemployment in France.

She could travel to Basel or somewhere else close to Strasbourg for a job or shelter but she needs to be with people who are understanding. She does not understand people's motives when they are speaking to her, for example.

If you know anyone, or any organisation, company, etc that could help her in getting a place to live or a job, even for a short time, this would really help.

I am not in Europe at the moment, and am having a few financial problems so I am not able to help her as much as I would like.

She really is a nice person, but has been challenged by this difficult condition.

Over the last few months, I have read about some incredible ideas, full of wonder, that I would like to share with you. I hope they make you wonder as much as they did me.

1. The mysterious Dorset People

Contrary to most people's beliefs, the Inuit haven't occupied the Far North for many millenia. They arrived at around 900 C.E. probably from Siberia and moving eastwards towards North America and finally Greenland.

However, they met and replaced as inhabitants of this desolate region a group of people that are mysterious to us, and legend to the Innuit: the Dorset people. Named after artifacts found in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, they are assumed to have been very tall, very peace loving and to be have become extinct around 1500 CE. They lived in stone buildings and may have taught the Innuit how to live in the Arctic.

They had no boats, no sled dogs and no bows and arrows, yet managed to survive in the most extreme conditions on Earth. They survived by fishing marine mammals and as the ice receded in the Medieval Warm Period, they moved to the High Arctic and later became extinct.

2. How did the Polynesians manage to navigate the oceans without maps or compasses?

They used a system called "wave train analysis" where one uses understanding of various types of objects that can affect wave movement in water.

The Polynesians did not have lodestones with which to make compasses, and their navigation system does not emphasize the stars, but the sea itself. The different wave patterns are studied and observed, as many, improbably, as fourteen simultaneously. The sophistication of the navigation is best appreciated in the bathtub. Set up a small wave train at one end of the tub by wiggling your finger. Now wiggle your finger at another end of the tub. Observe the interaction between the two sets of waves. Add a third system with another finger and try to discern each of the three wave patterns. This is already becoming formidably complex. Add a fourth, and a fifth. Keep going.

Navigating by wave train alone, the waves were best felt with the testicles; the navigator on each canoe had a special cabin he hunkered in. The idea, however, of making sense out of an interference pattern involving more than three or four wave systems is mind-boggling. The mathematical complexity of a fourteen-source interference pattern would appear more than can be held by any human brain. Or scrotum. And yet the historical record is clear about the existence of trading routes between Hiva Oa and Hawaii.